January 21, 2014
A Smattering of SEO News: 1/21/14

Hello my friends, and welcome to another week of SEO news! This time we have something of a whollop from Google regarding the practice of guest blogging, plus a bunch of interesting news from across the web. Let’s dive in, shall we?

Google News:

Matt Cutts Says Guest Blogging Is Dead, Then Clarifies – In a post on his blog, Google’s Matt Cutts originally announced that the practice of guest blogging — or bringing in influencers to write blogs on relevant topics to bring in links that make your site valuable — was dead, and as is typical, the Internet went insane. Posts were everywhere declaring guest blogging to be obsolete, and people who made that a cornerstone of their link building strategy of course panicked. Eventually, Cutts updated the title of his post to, “The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO”, to which he goes onto say that guest blogging is very valuable if done right. However, over time it’s become spammier and spammier, and guest blogs are mostly being used solely to pass on link value and Page Rank, which Google frowns upon. Overall, it seems like guest blogging is still great for bringing in influencers and adding value to your site, but if you’re using it just for links, you might want to rethink your strategy.

Google Pulls Over 350 Million Bad Ads From Its Own Network In 2013 – Google recently released its own report entitled, Busting Bad Advertising Practices — 2013 Year in Review, in which they look back over the last year and reveal they disabled more than 350,000,000 bad ads, banned more than 270,000 advertisers, blacklisted over 200,000 pages serving bad ads, and removed over 250,000 publisher accounts. The number of bad ads blocked are up fifty nine percent from 2012, when only 224,000,000 were blocked, while the number of bad advertisers blocked shrank from 850,000 in 2012 to 270,000 in 2013. Pretty good progress overall, I’d say.

First Google Glass, Now Google Contacts – Even though Google Glass hasn’t been fully released, Google announced it’s also working on a new type of “smart contact lens” to help those with diabetes monitor their glucose levels. Using sensors so small they look like tiny pieces of glitter, the contacts can monitor a user’s glucose level much more simply and less intrusively than is typical, allowing those with diabetes to better monitor their glucose levels (without wearing a bulky monitor or prick themselves with a pin multiple times a day). Google is in talks with the FDA to eventually bring this to market. Personally, I just want a Heads Up Display (H.U.D.) over my eyes to tell me the best route home from work every night.

Other News:

GoDaddy And Amazon Most Popular Hosts For Malware – According to a recent report from Solutionary titled their Quarterly Threat Intelligence Report (PDF), they found that popular hosts such as GoDaddy and Amazon are popular tools for hosting malware sites. In fact, malware authors are making use of multiple cloud-based hosts to help spread their software. For example, one domain was spread across twenty countries, sixty seven hosts and nearly 200 IP addresses in order to prevent detection. They’re utilizing the same simplified cloud-based hosting tools we are, which isn’t surprising, but still pretty amazing. As these software authors get more creative, we’ll have to be more diligient in identifying these sorts of threats before they attack our computers or our websites.

Facebook Adds Trending Topics To Front Page – In a further effort get people talking about and sharing interesting topics — which of course is a great SEO tool — Facebook has added a trending topics section to their homepage which scrolls several popular stories shared on the social network. Clicking on one of these topics will present a list of stories covering that topic from a variety of sources. This feature is slowly being rolled out to all users, and should be visible soon.

Facebook Inks Content Deal With Yandex – Facebook has announced a deal with Russian search engine Yandex in which the engine will have access to posts from users in Russia, Ukrane, Kazakhstan and other surrounding countries as soon as they’re posted. This content will then be available in Yandex’s search index and their blog search index. Yandex stressed that only posts available for public viewing will be available.

That’s it for this week’s SEO news, be sure to check in next Monday for more updates!